Gary G. Knowles

Born at the hood ornament end of the Baby Boom (November 13,1946), I was taught first to love riding and then driving by my father, Eugene T. Knowles and mother Del (Knowles) Fenner. Long before anyone ever thought of kid seats or seat belts I would stand between Mom and Dad on the bench seat of our '53 Chevy and watch the miles roll by as we drove to northern Wisconsin for a vacation, to California to visit relatives or just to run an errand from Glenbeulah to Plymouth.

In 1960 as I was entering high school at Elkhart Lake my mother bought a used 1956 Mercury convertible. It didn't take long to become a fan of sunny drives through the Kettle Moraine, the thrill of the breeze off Lake Michigan and the beauty of looking up at the night sky to see the northern lights, the Milky way or Sputnik arcing over the horizon. I soon was convinced that open-air driving was the finest way to travel.

At Elkhart Lake I had the good fortune to have friends introduce me to sports cars and road racing at Road America. As a volunteer photographer I had a track-side seat and pit access to watch the world's greatest race drivers - Bruce McLaren, Augie Pabst, Denny Hulme, Mario Andretti, Jim Hall - and dozens of others on one of the finest international race circuits. One of my first sports cars was a forest green Triumph Spitfire roadster which I ralleyed quite successfully with navigator Greg Nametz (whose father Everette was one of the founders of Road America).

I graduated with a BS in Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1969 and spent a couple of years with Garrett Theological Seminary (at Northwestern in Evanston, IL) before pursuing a career in communications. I received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts to develop innovative cable-tv programs and produced and hosted hundreds of TV and radio shows (in Madison) from 1974-79.

In 1979 I went to work for the State of Wisconsin and became the Director of the Bureau of Communications for the Division of Tourism. I got to know the many of the state's main and back roads while traveling extensively to host VIPS, travel writers and film crews. Working with a staff of five professionals I directed the development of an award winning Wisconsin travel publications program that included the Wisconsin Auto Tours Guide as it's most ambitious book. The Auto Tours was designed primarily to direct travelers to attractions on state and some local highways. From 1984 until 1997 (the last year it was available) it was the most requested tour guide the state produced.

I left the state in 1993 to get back to the private sector, serving as a marketing communications consultant, first with the Knupp & Watson Ad Agency (1993) and then in my own firm (Gary Knowles Marketing Communications - est. 1994).

In 1993 Alex McDonell (a fellow driving enthusiast from Madison) and I got together to create an event we'd both talked about for several years: The Wisconsin Convertible Classic Tour. This tour was designed to invite convertible lovers to spend four days in August touring Wisconsin's great backroads. It started with 67 cars in 1993 and quickly grew to more than 200 in 1998. The final WCC tour was held in 2005 and then in 2006 my wife Mae and I re-founded the tour with Mike and Donna Peroutka, convertible lovers and touring enthusiasts of Green Bay. Today it's called the OpenAir Classic and it's better than ever. (www.OpenAirTours.com)

The Great Wisconsin Touring Book is the net result of exploring Wisconsin for more than 35 years. It took about 18 months of checking routes, organizing notes, shooting extra pictures, checking maps, stretching my family's patience, begging forgiveness and pleading for extensions from my publisher before it all come together. There are 30 tours here. There are at least 30 more waiting to be told. Enjoy!

Gary Knowles

Madison, WI

November 2000 - Updated 2009

www.WondersOfWisconsin.com